Amy S.

In March, Matt and I went on a vacation with seven other friends to the British Virgin Islands aboard a Moorings catamaran cruise. We hopped from island to island and from beach to beach on our little catamaran. Every single day just got better! The water was fabulous and strolling through the sandy beaches felt like walking through soft baby powder.

On the last night of our trip, Matt and I stayed up recapping our vacation, talking about how we had to go again and who we needed to talk into coming down with us next time. We also agreed to get up early the last morning and take a dinghy to the beach to catch the sun coming up and grab some alone time. It was a bit windy and chilly that last morning, but thankfully, I had grabbed a sweatshirt before we went off. We got to shore around 7 a.m. and our footprints were the first on the fresh beach sand. We sat cuddled on a beach chair and talked about our favorite parts of the vacation and where we'd love to come back to again. There was nobody in sight.

After talking, we decided to take a few pictures with our handy little camera tripod. Matt took a couple of silly pictures of me walking down the beach, and then we did a posed picture of ourselves. As the red light on the camera started blinking, Matt ran over to pose, and I remember thinking he was running in a funny way with his arm behind his back. The next thing I knew, he said, "I only have ten seconds to do this " and went down on one knee in the water. I immediately burst into tears and tackled him in a bear hug as he struggled to not drop the box in the water. When I finally got a hold of myself, he opened the box with my grandmother's engagement ring inside. It was the ring I had always wanted! The ring was brilliant and slipped on my finger perfectly.

I thought that this was all I could handle, but then it got even better. Not only did he manage to have my grandmother's ring from the 1940's and not to lose it on the boat for a week, but he had also shared the proposal idea with both my family members and his. We drove our dinghy back to the boat and yelled, "Surprise! " and I waved my left hand to our friends on the boat. They yelled "Surprise! " back because they had already known about the proposal.

We had some celebratory rum, and then I found out that Matt had arranged for us to stay another day before going home. We took a private plane with champagne onboard back to our favorite spot from the trip and stayed at the same yacht club where we had been just a few days earlier. We had the most romantic private dinner poolside as the sun set at the far end of the resort. It was unreal: champagne, shrimp, lobster, wine, tropical flowers and chocolate. It was beyond a fairytale, and we even have the picture that captures the moment Matt proposed. So, that's our story: gorgeous place, good friends, first footprints in the sand, family heirloom and surprises. It's an excellent start to a story that I know will just keep getting better!